from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

Etymologies

down + stroke (Wiktionary)

Examples

One of my favourite players, Herschel Sizemore, on his tuition DVD, states that the Monroe 'downstroke' style was just too hard for him to do, so he developed the 'other' Monroe style, the 'fiddle' style of playing.

Their ghostly appearance is enhanced by the fact that the undersides of their chalk-white wings are dark brown, so with every upstroke they seem to disappear in the moonlight, then reappear on the downstroke.

Editors usually follow Hyder Rollins in supplying a dropped r for the second one, to get th [r] ough; [17] but Keats often writes a shorthand emphatic downstroke that implies two letters, and I think here he may have liked the fine-sounding of Though/blows/though enough to let it ride.